Greetings,
Below you will find a copy of Out of Class Essay #2 assignment, which was distributed and discussed in class today.
Also, please remember to bring a hard copy of the sample essay from the previous blog entry. We will discuss it in class on Wednesday. If you wish, you can also access it on an electronic device. In any case, please have it read by class on Wednesday, and be prepared to discuss its strengths and weaknesses.
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English 20, Spring 2014--C. Fraga
Date assigned: Monday, March 3
Rough draft (optional): due no later than Monday, March 17 (please submit as a Word
document via e-mail BY midnight. Note that I have changed the time from 5 pm to
midnight)
Final draft due: Monday, April 14
NOTE: you have six weeks
to plan, research, write and revise this essay. This gives you plenty of time
so you can, if you wish, NOT work on it during spring recess and STILL have
five weeks, which is a generous amount of time. Manage it wisely.
Details/Requirements:
1. MLA format
2. A minimum of 5 outside sources on
your Works Cited page. If you utilize personal interviews, be sure there are
not MORE interviews than resources from professional and/or academic
publications. The best place to start is the home page of the Sacramento State
Library. By this time in your college career, you should be very familiar with
the AMAZING databases available to you, just a click away!
3. Please, no Wikipedia or
encyclopedias as primary sources
4. No formulaic, 5 paragraph
essay
OUT OF CLASS ESSAY ASSIGNMENT
#2
Among many things, the series Breaking
Bad focuses on the family entity and what happens when something quite
extraordinary occurs—how do various members of the family cope, adjust, and/or
“deal” with the event/situation? (In the case of this series, obviously it is
Walter’s cancer that is the ‘event’).
I am not referring to the everyday
“bumps in the road” that occur for all families. Instead, I am asking you to
consider the family unit when faced with an especially challenging
situation. These situations could include but are not limited to:
death bipolar disorder
birth asberger’s
syndrome
infidelity complications
from a stroke
serious injury alcoholism
dementia drug
abuse
serious illness incarceration
divorce anorexia
unemployment bulimia
new employment spousal abuse
moving to a new
home/state/area/country
the return of a war veteran
moving BACK home after
initially moving OUT
suicide
severe depression
‘coming out’ in the LBGT
community
adoption
autism
deafness
sexual abuse
Select ONE situation that you are most
interested in exploring. You will conduct research (and possibly personal
interviews) in order to write an essay that offers the reader a brief
background on the topic and makes an assertion about what
elements impact a family in the most challenging of ways and supports it
logically and interestingly.
If you wish to focus on a situation that you are familiar with
firsthand, that is fine. However, this essay is not a narrative. It is a
research and analysis essay. In other words, you can certainly utilize personal
observations and experiences but you CANNOT rely on them to in any way be the
main supports for your essay.
Your thesis might read something like
this:
When a family member develops
dementia, the challenges are often devastating, yet the disease definitely
impacts family members more than the dementia patient.
Or…
When a couple divorces, it most
certainly impacts the children still living at home; however, it is the older
children who have already moved away that are most affected by the split.
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